Sisyphean Bills

Who wants a coach that quickly weeds out the weak and undermotivated?

Maybe they should fire April and hire a linebackers coach from UTEP... just saying.

Rest up for Friday TO!

Did anybody even respond to his football related points? Didn't think so.

I'm not covering Jeff Fisher's ass. I don't need to. The guy is a great coach and he hasn't always had "better players" than Jauron. His focus has been in controlling the trenches and having tough (mentally and physically) players that play aggressively. My comment was to the Jauron apologists that 1) ignore his unsuccessful years in Chicago by papering it over with excuses such as the "team played 16 road games" and "never had any talent at all" and 2) take a string of lean years by a Hall-of-Fame coach such as Tom Landry and extrapolate that Dick Jauron is gonna turn the corner any second now and transform into a Hall-of-Fame caliber coach. 7 losing seasons out of 8 puts him well off-center of the bell curve of coaches, for sure. But it is emphatically on the side with those like Kotite, Campbell, and Bennett rather than the side where Landry, Halas, Lombardi, and Noll reside.

Do you mean the several years where the Oilers were vagabonds wandering Tennessee waiting for their new stadium to be built? Yeah, Fisher was 8-8 during those years. In 14 full seasons, Fisher has had 4 losing seasons, a .557 winning percentage, and led his team to the playoffs 6 times. He has 5 playoff wins and a Super Bowl appearance. He also works for one of the original AFL owners. Fisher has developed his own coaching tree in the NFL as well. The one season that Jauron had a similar vagabond situation, when the Bears were renovating Soldier Field, his team went 4-12. (But, it wasn't his fault! Who could expect anything more under such horrible conditions?) In 8 full seasons, Jauron has had 7 losing seasons, a .429 winning percentage, and led his team to the playoffs 1 time. He's never come close to winning a playoff game. The two are virtually indistinguishable.

Taking this in a slightly different direction, this season is riding on Trent Edwards. The Bills are putting the offense in his hands and have changed their philosophy, on paper, to be an offensively driven team. They want to try to outscore everybody and be a team like Peyton and the Colts. Russ went out and got a "gun rack full of weapons". (Ok, so the gun rack had 1 weapon, Terrell "Publicity Addict" Owens.) Edwards is going to have to lead. They've got nobody behind him on the depth chart and put T.O. chattering in his ear hole. If the team continues its free fall from last season, is there really any question about it?

Shocking, isn't it? <yawn> I just wonder what he'll do with the key to the city. Maybe he can sell it on ebay, grinning madly.

Indubitably, Mr. Watson. OTOH, any concerns about Dick's approach to preparing the team makes one a "hater idiot".

They looked like guys that hadn't had any real physical contact in months.

Nope. After 3 years of Dickeradooball some may have spaced it, but football shouldn't have to be like watching paint dry.

Fitzpatpatsack's greatest attribute is that he is a complete non-threat to push for the starting job. How soon we forget the famous groin concussion...

Teach him who's big man on campus, Russ!

Yeah, but he seemed to settle into the flow of the offense better than Fitz. JMO.

Nice post. I disagree on Fitzpatrick though, slightly. I thought he looked distinctly below average. After all, he is not a rookie but a veteran QB with starting experience in the NFL and was playing against the Titans backups. When Edwards pulls up lame again, there is no reason to think Fitzpatrick can run this up-tempo offense from what he displayed last night.

Why not? 5 of them will count, but since there are 16 games that count, it won't matter and the coaches don't have to waste time on game planning and can spend it on teaching technique to all the rooks. j/k

You didn't provide a link, so no one is going to believe you. j/k

Sorry, but we should count on seeing more rookie mistakes up front this season and not just from Levitre. I do like Levitre, but it's simply unrealistic to think his last rookie mistake before becoming an instant Pro Bowler happened last night. It's also a mistake to assume that a few very quick plays that worked against a totally vanilla Titans defense yesterday are going to be there all season.

The Bills blew it. Again. Yippee?

You make a good point. The game, obviously, doesn't mean anything. But, the pre-season is still full of football games and NFL coaches still break down the film on these games for evaluation because players still have to execute the plays. The starters on the Bills look a step slow, flat footed, a bit out of sorts, and cannot execute in the red zone any better than the last 2 years. The no-huddle gimmick did not change anything there. The running game was actually pretty pathetic and the interior of the OL was breaking down early and often. Not that it was any surprise to some.

Are you complaining about Maybin's great first step ... away from the negotiating table?

Walker has done OK here, but that's about as far as I'll go. He's been adequate in pass protection on the right side and below average in the running game. You are right that the recent list of FAs is pretty pathetic. We will definitely see if he can hack it at LT. To paraphrase Langston, there isn't any other choice.

Insightful.

One could also look at it that the front office is setting him up to fail so they have a good excuse to cut his bloated contract next year. Asking a guy that has been in the NFL 8 years to elevate his game and step in at the toughest position on the OL after a rather pedestrian career to date is nothing short of a major gamble. There is a non-zero chance that Walker isn't cut out to be an elite LT, which will give the Bills a ready reason to go after someone else next off-season and toss Walker and his contract on the scrap heap. It's not like the writing isn't 10 foot high on the wall either after this past off-season.

So, are you a big fan of the "smaller, quicker Tampa-2" scheme? There really isn't any appreciable size difference between Ellison, Bowen or Harris. Ellison is the incumbent, which matters quite a bit I'd guess.